The guy seems to be a serious photographer, and I doubt that his intent was bad.

I take a fair number of photos with my iPhone. If people are simply part of the wider scene, I don’t ask permission. If I’m deliberately making somone the subject of a photo and I don’t know them, I ask.

The Toronto Star’s case was much more deliberate. Sarah Coyne is the daughter of Deborah Coyne, a constitutional lawyer and one-time Liberal candidate. However, Sarah’s biological dad is one Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

If she was just Sarah Coyne, the Star would have been unlikely to send someone to her university to do a similar feature.

As English noted, Coyne declined to be interviewed for a 10th-anniversary, but the Star reporter soldiered on.

English reached the following conclusion:

In weighing the public interest with this young woman’s desire for privacy, I have to agree with the Star editor who rejected a freelance writer’s pitch to report on Sarah Coyne’s university life many months ago.

“We’ll take a pass,” that editor wrote in the email the freelancer brought to me this week.“I don’t think there’s enough new current information to sustain this and justify intruding into a life she obviously wants to keep private.”

But as English also notes, the story was very well read. I wonder how many people both read the story and tut-tutted about the Star publishing it.

The Toronto Star has every right to ask my daughter if she wishes to adopt a more public posture. In turn, she has every right to expect that when she says no, her answer will be respected with the same degree of dignity and courtesy that she always takes care to demonstrate. Regrettably, that expectation appears to have been poorly founded. I hope and I trust that in the future your paper will respect reasonable privacy boundaries.